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I really enjoyed the cast, and I think it was for the perspectives it gave me on how game design is distinct as a discipline from other skillsets it involves. The best parts for example were talking about how to solve a problem in Monkey Island that made sense in the world, and the difference between a Day of the Tentacle style solution and a Monkey Island one, both of which were concerned with being a fun puzzle to solve.

Look forward to hearing more!

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Re: A game for a non-gamer, would anyone say Minecraft? That appears to be a quintessential children's gateway game of our time, but I don't know if it's the same for adults. Would someone have said Minecraft previously, but not now? If not, reasons?

Yeah, I think Minecraft is a perfect intro for kids, but terrible for adults. I've seen a number of adults play it for the first time, and get very frustrated by the lack of goals or guidance.

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I'm looking forward to the upcoming episodes. Were you already friends with the other guests or how did you end up contacting them?

For most of the people on the Cast I already knew them in some capacity just through industry events, mutual friends, etc. The only person so far that I've met for the first time via the podcast was Craig Hubbard, but even with Craig I had been in contact with him back in college when I was making FEAR levels. I interviewed him for my zine! But yeah mostly it's people who are friends or acquaintances.

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This was good. A few weeks ago I was listening to the Marc Maron podcast or something and remember thinking to myself "man it would be cool to have an interview show like this for game devs," and then this happens, and it's just as good as I'd hoped!

Regarding intro games, I remember once I brought my Wii home and my mom was curious to try out Mario Galaxy although she'd never played a game since Dr. Mario. Oh man what a disaster. The whole joystick to 3d space/movement idea did not work for her at all. And being on small, crazy 3d spheres probably didn't help. Maybe Journey would be better...at least initially there aren't any fail states and little pressure to even move forward.

Oh, I thought people released podcasts in mono to reduce file size. Maybe not as big a deal these days...

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Finally finished listening to the podcast (sometimes I listen over a long period of time with a gap or two). Really, really great stuff! I'm looking forward to the rest.

I've thought some (more than a little, less than a ton) about games for non-gamers. What I would recommend would vary wildly depending on what kind of person I was recommending the game to and what my goals would be in recommending a game. The conversation here seemed to turn as much on "what would do a good mix of getting you set up to be a person who enjoys games and also showing you what's so great about them," which I thought was really interesting, because although I could see those two things as being important to think about, mostly when I think of the question "what game would you give to a newcomer" I mostly ignore those two considerations and think about showing them something they'd like.

For instance, a lot of my go-to "first game for someone ever" games are Twine games. Are Twine games good things to show to someone if your goal is, for instance, to get them comfortable with navigating a 3d environment, dealing with time pressure by making use of hand eye coordination, and becoming accustomed to the sorts of narrative strategies games use? No, because Twine games are very different from other games. They don't require any skills that people who use Google don't already have and thus they don't teach anything. They don't work the way other games work, so they're not going to give people their first exposure to common game narrative techniques.

For all that, though, the Twine games have some real advantages over other games: namely, people who don't play games can enjoy them, a lot. For someone who's willing to read complex, evocative science fiction out there on the edge of literary technique, howling dogs is a revelatory experience, something that will open their eyes up to how amazing games can be. For someone (justifiably) worried about the narrow focus of video games, which tend to be about the sorts of things nerds find cool and/or violence, Cry$tal Warrior Ke$ha and Calories and Queer Pirate Plane and Arcadia show them that you don't have to like nerdy shit to like video games. Games like You Will Select a Decision and The Message get people straight into the narrative and are compelling and/or funny from the very first moment and up through the very last moment, which is a kind of sustained engagement that most games will never get with new players because they struggle so much with the mechanics.

So that's why I'd pick games like these as a first game - the idea is to have them play an icebreaker to open their eyes to the idea of games as an area of entertainment and art that they haven't been live to so far. Maybe the articles in The Atlantic or whatever will be enough to do that, so we're just talking about different questions and if I had someone as eager to game as the people Jake, Sean, and Steve were imagining I'd also give them Portal, but I tend to think the stigma that games (deservedly) have needs smashing in a way that has basically no chance of frustrating, confusing, or boring a potential new game player.

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For someone who's willing to read complex, evocative science fiction out there on the edge of literary technique, howling dogs is a revelatory experience, something that will open their eyes up to how amazing games can be.

I just played through this but although I enjoyed the writing (and, Wolfe, say) I'm not sure what is the revelatory bit.

You're in a cell in a system that's breaking down, experiencing past lives, possibly your own.

Am I missing something?

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It was cool to hear in detail about some aspects of the development of The Walking Dead. It's funny that I've listened to Jake and Sean talk about games so much on Idle Thumbs without getting into much nitty gritty about their own project. (Though I understand the hesitation to spend too much airtime on it; it would probably make them feel gross, and it's not really what the show is for.)

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If you guys enjoy this style of Podcast I would recommend Core Elements. They've had Ron Gilbert, Jonathan Blow, Andy Schatz, Edmund McMillen, Kent Hudson, Kellee Santiago, Eric Zimmerman, Greg Kasavin and Brendon Chung on the show, just to name a few. They're up to episode 50 so there's lots of good stuff to listen to.

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If you guys enjoy this style of Podcast I would recommend Core Elements. They've had Ron Gilbert, Jonathan Blow, Andy Schatz, Edmund McMillen, Kent Hudson, Kellee Santiago, Eric Zimmerman, Greg Kasavin and Brendon Chung on the show, just to name a few. They're up to episode 50 so there's lots of good stuff to listen to.

Nice, I'll have to check that out. I just started listening to the Infinite Ammo podcast as well, which so far has had Adam Saltsman, Edmund McMillen, and Jeff Lindsay. Early eps are a bit rough around the edges, but the discussions are mostly pretty interesting, though at times a bit frustrating IMO.

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Oh, so I have another interview request since that seems to be something that is happening in this thread. I played Eldritch last night, and it was cool. If you could interview David and J. Kyle Pittman that would be rad!

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A thread developed in the conversation involving the limits of word-language. Y'all played at the suggestion of a "tonal bible" for a game and Steve was often asking about principles that guided writing or development. A dissonance occured whenever someone would begin to explain their creative reasoning, and realize how complex the issue was. In the process of attempting to communicate how game narratives are kept cohesive and true to themselves, the question showed the qualities of a koan. All three of you came up with interesting hypothesis that spoke to what design-principles can be and what they cannot be. The dilemma was then demonstrated with the explanation that Lilly's value in The Walking Dead could not be pitched with mere words, implying that the game synergizes content in an indescribable way that is none the less a shared experience.